


balance the chaos

by TheBrokaryotes



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, ITS A MODERN AU, Indian Allura - Freeform, M/M, Mental Illness, Minor Allura/Shiro (Voltron), based loosely on aristotle and dante, hunk and pidge are a thing too, keith's an h&m weeb slut, lance has an eating disorder kinda but not really, oopsie cori's writing a chapter fic??, or at least an earth AU, shiro's a tutor, theSE TAGS SUCK, this is new
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-08-27 07:22:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8392423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBrokaryotes/pseuds/TheBrokaryotes
Summary: Life is a series of weird phases, odd ins and outs, strange emotions and loud, bright events that burn in your mind and brand themselves as memories in your psyche. --Lance knows he doesn't have it right. But he's determined to make it through.





	1. tuesday

**Author's Note:**

> so like???? yeah i'm writing a chapter fic sue me  
> this was done on a whim so yeah idk  
> any questions or comments on improvements i can make please let me know!!!!! i didn't do much research in this one. thanks!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance remembers a year ago, when doors didn’t revolve, and life was a whole lot simpler.

It’s a Tuesday. The revolving doors of the facility hum as Lance passes through them. He remembers a year ago, when the doors didn’t revolve, and life was a whole lot simpler. When he didn’t have to wait to step inside the little death quadrant and scurry forward to avoid having his heels clipped. When he didn’t have to be here.

The attendant behind the desk regards him coolly but with an air of hospitality. He’s later in years, around sixty, with salt and pepper hair and a tiredness that hung around him at all times. But it wasn’t bad, Lance didn’t think. It was the kind of tiredness one could tolerate. Like a grandpa, tired from a life well lived.

“Afternoon, Mr. McClain,” the man greets, pursing his lips as he widens his smile. The edges of his lips disappear under the apples of his cheeks, and his mustache hides the thin line of his mouth.

“‘Sup, Mr. Montgomery,” Lance tosses his hand up to wave briefly, the other still shoved deep in his jacket pocket. He liked Mr. Montgomery, liked the way his hair was more salt than pepper and his skin was creased enough to see every bit of his age. He liked that the lines around his eyes were from smiling his whole life through. “Better warn the nurses, I’m here again.”

Mr. Montgomery raises one eyebrow and straightens a bit in his desk chair. “I’ll be sure to give them a heads up.” His tone is just behind the line of being serious, and Lance doesn’t blame him; if he were an old man behind a reception desk, he wouldn’t let himself flirt with nurses either.

Lance keeps his pace through their interaction, knowing he doesn’t need to wait around for Mr. Montgomery to find his name on the checklist. Lance is here every Tuesday. _You should be here every day,_ he’ll tell himself sometimes. But school was hard. Senior year piled it all up. And he couldn’t get into an astrophysics major at an Ivy League university without doing his homework. But he was trying.

 _I’m trying_ , he felt the urge to mutter under his breath as Mr. Montgomery disappeared from his periphery and the long hallway of the main floor swallowed him up. The Mile, he liked to call it.

At the end of the Mile was the Pit (Lance didn’t call it that, that was its colloquial name), so titled for the two dainty steps that led from the Mile into it. In the Pit were the patients. A few of them looked up at him as he strode inside, hands still shoved deep in his pockets. A couple of them smiled in his direction, and a kid there who he’d interacted with a few times gave him a high five as he walked past.

In the center of the Pit, with her back to Lance as he walked up, sat a woman of forty-six. Her dark corkscrew curls bounced over the back of the cushioned chair she was sitting it, and from the way her head was bent, Lance could tell she was reading. He could see the point of her cat-eye glasses from the bridge of her nose, and as he approached her quietly and carefully, he took note of just how nice they looked on her face. How suited they were to her.

He clears his throat, suddenly feeling light-headed. “Hey, Mom.”

The woman’s movements are slow, deliberate at first. In one motion, she lowers the book— _The Odyssey_ , again—and lifts her head, staring straight forward. Then suddenly she turns to look into Lance’s belly, before her gaze flickers up to his face. There’s a look of mottled surprise in her eyes. Lance thinks he can still read the words she had just been soaking up in her deep brown irises.

For a horrifying split second, she doesn’t see him. Or she sees him, but she can’t see him. He’s invisible to her. She’s blinded by something else; confusion, uncertainty, Odysseus. Then it’s gone, and the clarity floods into her eyes as her honey-glaze smile drips across her face, melting Lance’s heart.

“ _Cariño_ ,” his mother coos giddily as she rises from her chair, circling around it with a happy pep in her gait that brings a laugh to the brim of Lance’s ribs. She encircles him in her arms, the top of her head coming up to his chin. He drapes his arms over her shoulders, pressing his palms to the blades and pulling her close. He just saw her last week, he knows, but it feels like an eternity. It always does.

“ _Te he extrañado, mijo_ ,” she sighs, rubbing his back. He feels her nails through his hoodie and his T-shirt underneath. There’s gaps in pressure where some should be. When she pulls away he catches the smell of her shampoo. It’s not the same as it always was, but through it, he can still smell her. Her. Her smell never changes.

“I missed you too, Mom,” he says hastily, on impulse. She lifts her face to look at him, and brings her hands to his cheeks, pushing them together. Her expression turns scrutinizing, and for a moment Lance thinks he’s in trouble.

“You’re not eating,” his mother declares flatly. “Look, you’ve got no fat in your cheeks. And this, look at this—” She grabs his wrist, plucking at the loose fabric around his forearm. “Your clothes are hanging off of you. Lance, _mijo_ , you need to eat.”

Lance tugs his arm away with a light laugh, trying to push away the guilt in his gut. “I eat, Mom, I eat all the time.” Not always the truth. He would eat like a horse for three days, then for a week, like a bird. His eating habits were wrecked, just like his sleep pattern. 

His mother pouts, pinching his cheeks again. “Eat more,” she insists, before letting go and bringing him around to the chair across from hers. He never felt comfortable in these seats. They felt too soft, too easy to fall asleep in. He always sunk right into them like a stone into water.

“Odyssey again?” Lance queries with a sigh, leaning forward in his seat so as not to get swallowed whole. His mother seats herself daintily, her skirt fluttering softly as she lowers herself. Lance watches her cross her hand over the other, notices her nails. Bitten, unevenly. Nervously. Only on the middle and pinkie fingers. He looks up her arms, covered in a beige shawl, traces his eyes up to her shoulders, her chest and neck, her face. Scanning. Observing.

She smiles again, tilting her head a hair to the side and raising her eyebrows. “‘Oh for shame, how the mortals put the blame on us gods, for they say evils come from us, but it is they, rather, who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given.’”

“Guess you’re all set for the quiz, then,” Lance teases. He liked that his mother used to be an English teacher, liked that she would come home and tell him all about her day. He liked when she was around to hug him more, embrace him, her scent like warm cookies and cinnamon churros.

“It’s good literature, Lance,” she says with a hinting tone. “You can take this copy home, if you’d like to.”

Lance stops her with a wave of his hand. They’d had this discussion before, and it always ended the same way. She would offer him a book, he’d decline, and she’d talk about all its motifs and thematic qualities until his ears bled. Just from her explanations, he figured he knew more about _The Odyssey_ than Homer himself.

She chatters for a while about something or other—Lance caught the word “Charybdis”, a name so odd sounding it piqued his interest for a millisecond before it was gone again—and he just watched her. He hears, but he doesn’t listen. He watches her mouth as she talks, watches her take off her glasses and fold them in her hands without looking. Her eyes dart towards the ceiling, as if her thoughts are strung from the fiberglass panels. Her hair bounces every time she turns her head, and it frames her face so perfectly. She was the perfect mother, the perfect woman, and the only one Lance had ever truly cared about in his life. She _was_ perfect.

Days like these, Lance cherishes. When she’s not sundowning, when she’s been eating right and taking her meds, when she has something to discuss. The days when she’s not humming nervously or scratching herself or talking about him like he’s been dead forever.

“Your father loved this book, too, you know,” he hears her say. Lance rouses, lifting his head from his palm where he’d let it rest as he gazed, lost in thought. He hums questioningly, acknowledging her.

“He did,” she continues, her gestures growing more exuberant. “Once, we were staying after class late to study, and we climbed up to the rooftop—we weren’t allowed to, but we did anyway—and we brought that book and took turns reading passages. It was lovely, _mijo,_ I truly wish you had been there, you—”

She stops, and Lance feels his shoulders tense. Her face has fallen, like her mind was misfiring. Her hands have frozen where they are in the air, sinking down slowly as gravity pushes on them. A look of pure non-computation has glazed itself over her eyes.

“Wish you… you’d been there,” she repeats. “But no, you… you weren’t there, you— Lance, _mijo_ , you weren’t there—”

“Mom,” he utters quickly, taking one of her hands and bringing it down. She flicks her head towards him, startling him slightly. She looks ready to cry. Their hands hang, laced together, in the space between their bodies.

“You brought the book up to the roof,” Lance urges, offering a smile and shifting in the too-soft cushions. “Then what happened?”

“The roof,” his mother repeats, knitting her brow.

“The roof. You were studying.”

“Studying.”

“With Dad.”

“Your father,” she repeats, and Lance feels his chest deflate. _Yes. My father._ It was just a simply possessive pronoun, but it meant the world to Lance. She remembered Dad.

“Right, yes. Studying… “ As quick as it had come, the spell was gone. A few more pauses and she was up again, running her mouth like she’d never stopped. After a while, Lance let go of her hand, and with it, the memory that she’d slipped up. But that feeling, that feeling his gut, that worry that she might not remember him ever again, that he might come in to this place and no longer be _mijo_. That remained.

It never went away.


	2. wednesday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lance has never sat up in his bed at 3 AM, struck with the notion that he understands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this whole fic is a little disjointed
> 
> introducing supportive hunk!!! give hunk all your love he deserves so much.

As far as Lance was concerned, life wasn’t a storybook. Storybooks were fun.

Life is a series of weird phases, odd ins and outs, strange emotions and loud, bright events that burn in your mind and branding themselves as memories in your psyche.

Life was confusing. Storybooks are not confusing. Because in storybooks, everyone has a place and a role. In life, no one knows what the fuck they’re doing. Ever.

Lance feels like a prime example of that. He tries his best, he works his hardest to give it his all, but he still never feels like he really _gets it_. He’s never sat up in his bed at 3 AM, struck with the notion that he understands. Usually if he’s awake at 3 AM, he’s on his computer or in tears.

He’s not alone, he tells himself, but it’s hard to feel that way when it seems like everyone else is so put together. Hunk, for example. Lance’s best friend. Hunk is big, nervous, but exceptionally rational. He may be keen to tear up over spilled milk, but he’s put together; as Voltron High’s star defensive lineman, Hunk somehow manages to find time to complete all his work, attend practices, and listen to Lance complain.

“Dude, you’re so… with it,” he feels compelled to say one day. He hung upside-down from Hunk’s bed, the crown of his head pressed to the carpet of the floor. It hurt, a bit, but he didn’t really mind. He liked how being upside-down flipped the world around. He liked seeing the new perspectives.

Hunk was leaning against the headboard. Lance’s legs were draped haphazardly across his lap, one of them encroaching on his belly. Hunk was warm, soft, built like a truck. Lance felt so safe in his presence.

“Did the blood rush to your head?” Hunk asks teasingly, lowering the notebook in his hands. He rests it on Lance’s shins, and Lance can feel the cool of the paper against his jeans. “Where’d that come from?”

Craning his upper body up from the floor, Lance fixes Hunk with a vaguely-peeved expression. “Do I need a reason to compliment you?”

“No, but that one just came out of nowhere.”

“Well, maybe I’d been thinking about it for a while and I only just now said it.”

Hunk seemed addled, so he just rolled his eyes until they set back to the math on the college-ruled paper. “Thanks, then, I guess.”

Something told Lance that Hunk didn’t believe him. “I’m serious,” he insists, rolling his body up all the way and squiggling so he was on the bed entirely. Hunk let out a small exasperated sigh, but smiled regardless, like a mother with an unruly but beloved child.

Lance began rattling off compliments, raising a finger on his hand and tapping each one as he did. “You’re the best defensive lineman on the team, you’ve got a girlfriend—sorry, partner—you have straight A’s, you’re getting an athletic scholarship to _MIT_ —”

“I’m only going there for the engineering program,” Hunk insists, like it’s a defense. “And I don’t have straight A’s, I have a B in math.”

“ _You take calculus BC!_ ”

“It’s hard. Pidge has an A.”

Lance groans, lowering himself once more. A bit too fast. His spine aches in protest, and he winces. Hunk doesn’t see it.

He hears Hunk’s voice again. “Lance, none of that means I’m put together. It just means I do stuff.”

“But you _can do_ all that stuff. Me, I’m just flailing around helplessly. I have three D’s, Hunk. No A’s. I haven’t slept through the night in forever. I don’t eat right anymore.”

A twinge of guilt and sadness pangs through his stomach, as if mocking his lack of hunger. His mother would be so disappointed if she knew that. She’d make him soft tacos with pico de gallo and carnitas. She’d have him help her cut avocados and make guacamole. He’d be happy that way. He’d eat that way.

“That doesn’t make you any worse off than me, Lance.” Hunk’s tone has turned soft, and he’s set down his pen. “You’re still okay. You’re bright and full of corny puns. You’re suave and kind, you don’t let the world weigh on you. You’re great.”

Lance hears conviction in his voice, and he turns his head away, looking out the window. The sun was gone, and the blackness of the night was dotted with the lights of house windows. Dust accumulated on the sill, moisture on the pane. It had been humid today, he recalls. A humid Wednesday.

A pause, where neither of them speak. Lance feels the atmosphere shift, like a color changing on a computer screen saver. He feels Hunk’s words in his heart before they reach his ears.

“Did you go see her yesterday?”

Lance nods, and it’s probably out of Hunk’s view, so he sits up and does it again, his head still turned away. He feels a little childish, and he rubs the heel of his hand against his dry cheek, preemptively wiping away his tears.

“How was she?” Hunk’s eyes hold concern, dark and soft, just like Lance’s mother’s. He was always so tender and gentle when it came to Lance’s mother. He’d known her for a long time, and her illness had hit him almost as hard as it hit Lance and his family. He would sometimes come to see her when Lance didn’t want to go alone. When he couldn’t face the reality of having a mother with dementia by himself.

Lance offers up a shrug, not really wanting to elaborate. “She was alright. She talked about _The Odyssey_ again. She— she talked about my dad. She remembered their college days.”

What he left off was her slip up. He never wanted to talk about them. He wanted to forget them, just like she probably did. In a warped way, it made him feel better about the whole situation.

Hunk nods slightly as Lance talks. Lance is sure he can see the apathy in his face, but he’s glad when he doesn’t press him for any more information. “That’s good,” he declares, inflection hopeful.

“Yeah. That’s good,” Lance echoes. In the smallness of Hunk’s room, it is good. Here is a place where the “bad” of life couldn’t get to him. Here is where he didn’t have to remember that he lived this way, with a father and three siblings, with a mother he saw on Tuesday’s who sometimes forgot his name.

Here—where he finally breaks down and Hunk’s strong arms are around his shoulders, low voice telling him that it was alright, it was all going to be alright—here is good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case you haven't noticed, i love making lance suffer  
> also yes, pidge and hunk are dating. yes pidge is aged up. it doesn't matter. they're not the focus of this fic. get out of my house


	3. thursday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Yeah, Keith Shirogane. He's my brother."
> 
> "Keith is your _brother?_ "

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ITS BEEN FOREVER im sorry. ive never been good at notes BUT today i can say that im gonna try my hardest to get chapter 4 out. its been.......a thousand years........but im working on it.
> 
> In which Lance is FUCKED (but not actually. also theres no Shance in this sorry)

“How’s this?”

“Mm, close. You still have to derive the inside function.”

Lance kicks himself, feeling heat pool in his cheeks and thanking his dark complexion for hiding the color. He wanted to do well, wanted to get this right, didn’t want to have a tutor anymore.

Okay, well, the latter wasn’t exactly true. He liked his tutor. He liked Shiro.

He wished he could like Shiro for his intelligence and willingness to help Lance with his stupid problems, wished he could appreciate him for his patience and his kindness. It couldn’t be that way, though, because Takashi Shirogane was the hottest man that Lance had ever seen.

Lance’s hand scrawls numbers of its own accord. He’s hyper-aware of Shiro’s closeness, of his eyes trained on Lance’s writing and the derivative he was jotting down, probably incorrectly.

“This way?” Lance tries again, barely looking up. He takes note of the way Shiro tilts his chin to the side before twisting the paper around towards himself, examines the sharp point of his jaw, his half-lidded eyes looking down and skipping around the page. The little frock of bleached hair dances as he tilts his head again, flicking it out of his eyes subconsciously with a minute twitch. His long, deft fingers press to the notebook paper, soft and swift. Lance wonders how they’d feel running along his neck.

 _Stop that_ , he scolds himself, stone-still as an inappropriate vignette plays in the theater of his mind.

Shiro bites his lip, and _fuck_ , the dent it leaves on his salmon-pink lips is _way_ too distracting. His mouth moves, but Lance barely hears the words leaving it.

“This is good, yeah, but now you have to simplify. You remember how to get fractions and negatives in the exponent into their proper form, right?”

Lance nods his head. He did not know how to get fractions and negatives in the exponent into their proper form, not by a long shot. He takes the paper back and sets to work, conscious that their session was over at 5 o’clock, and it was 4:57.

It’s Thursday. Lance always met with Shiro on Thursday’s. Sometimes Shiro would bring Lance food from the market. Always salads or healthy-looking sandwiches. Brain food, he called it. Lance may not eat often, but he never once passed up one of Shiro’s offerings.

Today it had been half of a turkey club, with chipotle mayonnaise (“I asked for it special, since I remember you saying you liked it.”). It was the first proper thing Lance had eaten since Monday morning. The bread had been dry, but he didn’t complain.

The barred clock above the classroom door ticks to five. Lance could see Shiro’s patient smile out of the corner of his eye, and he quickly scrambled to finish—what was he doing? Simplifying? Evaluating? Fuck it, he didn’t know. Panicked, he multiplied two and three into five and handed the notebook back, running his hands down his face. “That okay?”

Upon inspection, Shiro chuckles. “It’s good. Two and three make six when you multiply them, but yeah. I think you’re getting the hang of it.”

“Thanks,” Lance utters, pretending to stretch back into his chair. “Hey, um… there’s a test on this stuff on Monday, and I was wondering if we could meet again before then to go over it?”

Shiro glances up at Lance, eyes going a little blank. They were still beautiful, dark as onyx, polished as obsidian. His mouth tugs into a grimace, and he hisses softly through his teeth.

“I’m all booked up until then,” he says, genuine sadness in his tone. Lance’s stomach sinks; Shiro tutored for the school, which meant that when he wasn’t with Lance, he was with one of a hundred other girls who all pretended to be failing their calculus classes just for a chance to be with him. He was certain it was for just that reason, because he’d known of more than one female student to leave Shiro’s sessions once they’d learned about his girlfriend, a beautiful woman named Allura, from Tamil Nadu.

Lance didn’t have the option to be jealous of her, because he was desperate as fuck, and shit at math.

“Okay, thats— that’s fine, I’ll just ask one of the other kids in my class, then.”

Shiro looked remorseful, but after a moment of thought his expression brightened with an idea. “Why don’t you ask Keith?”

A fire of mixed emotions runs along Lance’s spine, coagulating in his gut. Keith. That mullet-wearing prick. He can’t keep the acrimony out of his inflection as he repeats, “Keith?”

“Yeah, Keith Shirogane. He’s my brother. I’m pretty sure he’s in the math class ahead of you.”

Only once before had Lance felt shock like this, and just like before, he couldn’t fathom what he was hearing. “Keith is your _brother?_ ”

Shiro seems sheepish, smiling a bit awkwardly. “Yeah. I mean, not biologically, but… yeah, he’s my brother. He can help you out.”

While Lance picked his jaw up off the ground, Shiro took a moment to give him Keith’s information. “You can just text him or email him whenever. He doesn’t really do any extra-curriculars except for fencing, so he should definitely be available. If he gives you trouble, tell me. I’ll talk to him for you.” Shiro punctuates the end of his promise with a wink.

 _Takashi Shirogane winked at me._ Lance had never felt more inclined to kiss his tutor then and there.

**Author's Note:**

> stay tuned for more hell


End file.
